Business

Obama, Chamber of Commerce look for common ground

admin Contributor
Font Size:

WASHINGTON (AP) — After two years of vociferous conflict over health care and financial regulations, President Barack Obama and the nation’s top business lobby — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — have entered into something of a detente.

Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech Monday at the Chamber, a first for him. Not four months ago, he had attacked the huge, Republican-leaning trade organization for failing to disclose donors to its $32 million congressional political campaign. “Their lips are sealed,” Obama said at the time, “but the floodgates are open.”

The White House and the Chamber now are highlighting areas of common ground and expressing a joint commitment to creating jobs. Obama has stressed his new economic agenda, featuring competitiveness, innovation, energy and entrepreneurship. Disagreements linger and are no less vehement, but they no longer are the subject of loud legislative battles and big-dollar advertising campaigns by the Chamber.

White House officials say Obama’s speech will not break new policy ground, nor will he offer an olive branch. But in his radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama said he planned to tell businesses they have an obligation to stay in the United States, hire American workers and invest in the nation’s future.

The speech — part nudge, part courtship — is a message to business that is hardly limited to the Chamber of Commerce. Obama met with some of the nation’s top 20 executives in December, gently prodding them to get cash off their balance sheets and use it to create jobs. Also in December, he negotiated a compromise with Republicans on tax cuts that won him some grudging boardroom support.

It wasn’t always so. During his first two years as president, Obama was known to play a populist hand, referring to bankers as “fat cats,” rebuking corporate lobbyists and casting the insurance industry as an antagonist in the health care debate. So bitter were the fights, they overshadowed areas of solid agreement, including the Chamber’s support of Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus plan and the bailout of automakers General Motors and Chrysler.

“What’s changed now? I would use four words,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in an interview with The Associated Press. “The election has changed.”

The Republican wave in the November election wrested control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats. It created a need for more compromise in the legislative process and for the type of outreach Obama did not seek — and Republicans did not offer — when Democrats were in total control.

Obama needs the centrist cloak that the business community offers. The Chamber can benefit by softening the sharp edges it developed fighting the health care overhaul and tighter financial rules.

Both sides need each other for policy, as well. The Chamber can help the Obama administration win congressional support of trade deals, particularly a recently renegotiated pact with South Korea. Both the White House and the Chamber face Republican opposition to increased spending on public works, from roads and bridges to wireless networks.

On trade, on infrastructure and — mostly — on regulations, Donohue said, companies want certainty from the government.

“The reason the companies are sitting on $2 trillion worth of cash is because of uncertainty,” he said.

Obama long has had allies in the private sector. He has given corporate CEOs advisory roles, and throughout his first two years, he held periodic lunches with executives at the White House. But until now, he had not brought them into his inner circle.

Last month, that changed. Obama named Bill Daley, a former commerce secretary and JPMorgan Chase executive, as his chief of staff. He promoted Gene Sperling, a known quantity to the business community, as his new chief economic adviser. He gave high-profile assignments to General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and AOL founder Steve Case.

In one of his first calls in his new post, Sperling called Donohue, who welcomed him with characteristic bluntness: “Glad to have someone over there I’m comfortable sparring with at 10 a.m. and sitting down with at 2 p.m. to work on policy.”

The story, confirmed by White House and Chamber officials, helps illustrate the 2011 version of this relationship.

Donohue also saw Daley’s appointment as a positive signal.

“Daley is a big-time Democrat, but he’s a sound guy,” Donohue said. “He knows how the town works, he knows how business works. He knows how the system works.”

Still, the Chamber can be a sharp-elbowed foe.

“The Chamber is an enormously sophisticated Washington insider organization and is run by very conservative Republican operatives, for the most part,” said Matt Bennett, a vice president at the centrist but Democratic-leaning Third Way. “That relationship is always going to be more difficult than the broader outreach to business.”

But the joint focus these days is jobs. In front of the 10 massive Corinthian columns that grace the front of the Chamber’s building, Donohue has authorized the placement of giant banners that spell out J-O-B-S.

The letters are visible from the White House through the bare winter trees of Lafayette Square — offering both a sign of common purpose and a reminder to the White House occupant of the 9 percent unemployment rate that still bedevils him.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel